“It is the June Solstice wherever you go today,” I wrote last week. In the Northern Hemisphere we observe the Summer Solstice and in the Southern Hemisphere the Winter Solstice is observed. Like everything humans do, there is some disagreement about what this means, except that old Sol aligns with the Tropic of Cancer.

I live in Tucson, Arizona, so for me that means that June is the height of the dry Summer. Summer Solstice is definitely the middle of summer in my book. The monsoons usually start in July during which time the humidity spikes while temperatures remain quite high.

This has been an unusual year, weather-wise. Spring often is only evident here by the blooms of plants. Here is southern Arizona we say that, “The ice breaks on the Santa Cruz River” the first day it reaches 100 degrees F. It usually happens in April, but this year it was mid-May before we hit a hundred; it was on May 17th, my birthday, June 17, our wedding anniversary, often records temperatures well over 110 degrees. I do not remember what the temperature was last week on the 17th. That information was lost, completely overwritten, with the slaughter of nine good people at Bible study at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, SC by a hateful, domestic terrorist.

I often wish others, “Happy Solstice.” The main reason I am pleased when Mid-Summer arrives is that the monsoons will soon arrive.

But this year there is a pall over the anniversaries and celestial celebrations that has finally broken through my resolve to exclude sadness from this time of year. I am tired of being parched. It is so dry around here that things can mummify. That can put one in a foul mood. In these days of air conditioners, central air, evaporative cooling, and electric fans it is rather hard to explain why I am living in a hot-house. It is not for the plants. My husband and I are trying to stay on budget and pay off all debt. Obviously to do this we cannot accumulate more debt. So we are limping along with a 20-year-old A/C unit that needs to be replaced. There are parts of our home that will not get below 80 degrees. That makes me a bit irritable too. We will pay cash for a new unit when a tax return is generated for us; did I tell you that some thief filed our taxes for us this year?

With the already evident climatic fluctuations caused by the increase in overall global temperatures, what the future holds for us here is not promising.

Then there is this year’s unsuccessful attempt to push back the memories that come forward every year near the anniversary of my mother’s death. June 25th.

I was to have a Grand Opening for the Women’s Legacy Project on June 25th. But I just could not finish the last bits and pieces of the remaining tasks. Thoughts about religion and racist beliefs have been on my mind constantly these past 10 days and that is not conducive to the concentration needed for a few more launch tasks. Looks like September is the next window for an opening.

Where does protected public expression of your beliefs end and imposition of your beliefs on others begin? It starts way before the killing of 9 good people. I do not say any pledges to flags. I do not support any organized religion. Personal faith is another matter and should be kept personal. But everyone believe they are right. In this area I just do not know, but I do know that freedoms granted by the constitution allow me to do business in public and have my private beliefs.

I will not actively or passively support the public imposition of a religion that was conceptualized at the same time that human sacrifice was practiced. Abraham was going to ritually slaughter his son. Perverse. I am just as suspicious of beliefs related to these practices as I am of any system that has incorporated ritual sacrifice of living creatures. I am extremely uncomfortable with patriarchal, segmentary lineage beliefs and practices that trace to North Africa 5,000 years ago.

Faith is a decision, said Mother Teresa.

Mysticism is “belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.”

I have had mystical experiences and from those I have decided to have faith. But I do not want to impose my beliefs on others. That is one of the reasons I like written words so much. We can choose not to read. But please do not expect me to quietly support your ritual practices in my presence unless I have willingly and overtly made a decision to participate in them. Flag flying, a behavior, can be a very dangerous thing. One thing can stand for another. One thing can represent another. One thing often points to other things.

Love and grace are real to me. Everything else is questionable. Even summer and winter depends on where you are standing. I stand firm in my understanding that everything is relative.

I cannot seem to finish the posts I am writing. I lose interest with tasks if I do not complete them in one pass through. It is not exactly disinterest which I associate with depression. It is sort of a numbness. Rainy and cloudy days in Tucson, Winter’s arrival, might explain my blah-ness.

Reacting to a life in which I am, almost daily, realizing things I should have asked of someone in my family before there was no one left to ask might explain it.

I am disturbed by police getting off without even a ruffle of a real brush with justice for murdering young boys and men with dark skin. The racism that is everywhere in America along with the relatively recent militarization of police forces combines into a really frightening and alien landscape.

My innermost, Pollyanna, self still believes in the goodness that all humans are born with, no original sin for me, nope, and no matter how lousy things get, and believe me, I know lousy, I have to believe that people are inherently better than they seem to be if we get our information about humanity from the airwaves and digital papers rather than from the individuals that make up humanity.

I know that individuals are good, mostly, and that individuals can have substantial influence and change the course of major processes, sometimes. I also learned many moons ago in school that behaviors rewarded by intermittent reinforcement are the most difficult ones to extinguish. The fact that something does not work all the time does not deter me from trying to make it work.

Somewhere deep down inside, I also know that women can successfully change the negative course of where our world seems to be heading. If my voice can motivate or encourage one person to act to build a better world, shouldn’t I do it? I’m wondering what I can do that will be or promote the most significant and positive change in the world.

I keep thinking that the amazing women I am lucky enough to know could do amazing things if we engaged in a collective effort.

I want to get re-involved with NOW that has sagged a bit here in Tucson with the new chapter’s founder’s ill-health.

I also have thoughts of organizing a month long blogging fest that caters to the intelligent, concerned, old enough to know better woman writer. Not necessarily a write every day blog challenge but a “challenge” with options to engage every day, every weekday, or on weekends.

Or maybe to organize a get together of women to discuss writing, wisdom, and what they feel they as yet have to write at a lovely Tucson resort. NOT a “conference.” More like an intimate brain trust retreat of sage women writers that happens to take place by a pool with drinks. No how to sell your writing for cheap to corporations.

I will plot and scheme my way out of the darkness into a better world. Been doing it all of my life.

Happy winter mid-point to spring! Whether you call it Groundhog Day, Candelmas, Imbolc, or St. Brighid’s Day, the point in the annual cycle of days and seasons where we are in this current year has been marked in the Northern Hemisphere for tens of hundreds of years.

I am a veritable fountain of information on February 2nd because 24 years ago, February 2nd, 1989, I stepped off a train in Tucson with only a couple of bags, to begin a life together with the man who is now my husband. We married close to the Summer Solstice of that year, but one of our favorite anniversaries is Groundhog’s Day. Yes, we have many anniversaries, and no, what occasions they mark are none of your beeswax. I’ve researched the day, okay?

Imbolc is the “pagan” observance of the day. I’ve never really been able to figure out what pagan is. When I was little I was taught by a very nice Sunday School teacher who was 3 zillion years old and spoke of things ancient from personal experience. She taught me that pagan meant any belief that wasn’t Christian. I later learned that wasn’t quite right, but I have come around once again and have realized that any belief system that is not Fundamentally Christian is viewed as a Pagan belief by Fundamentalist Christians who, apparently, are trying to take over the United States political and judicial system. Pagan equates with evil in these people’s thesauri. So I don’t like the word. Although I personally refer to it as all it really means is that is one of the four primary Gaelic seasonal festivals: Samhain (~1 November), Imbolc (~1 February), Beltane (~1 May) and Lughnasadh (~1 August). Wicca is too modern a religion to be as structured as it seems to be from my perspective. I am personally suspicious of all religious ritual. I guess I am a gnostic at heart. What I believe, I believe because of personal experience.

What the Wiccan/Pagan perspective does offer is the recognition of natural, earth-based cycles. Every woman understands cycles, lunar and otherwise. Even our non-agrarian, industrial society kept seasonal celebrations under the guise of various religious holidays.

Enough religious history. Now for etiology! Woot! Imbolc comes from the word oimelc which translates as the phrase “ewe’s milk” in the old Irish tongue. Now is the tiime for preparation for the birth of spring lambs.

St. Brighid Day is really nothing more than the transliteration of one of the forms of the Goddess associated with the Celtic observance of Oimelc into the pantheon of Saints within the Catholic Church that was made to assist with the incorporation of Celtic peoples into the Roman Empire by overlaying Christianity onto existing observances.

Our culture has a memory beyond that of any one slice of time in one place. Thousands of years of our history was spent with the majority of our population dedicated to agriculture and husbandry. Even when we don’t know why we do things, we continue to do them. Our American ritual of determining the likelihood of six more weeks of winter or an early end to winter predicted by the amount of sunshine on the morning of February 2nd comes from the same Northern European traditions of observing the midpoints between the solstice and equinox.

Somehow there may also be some sort of connection to ritual reincorporation of a woman into the community 40 days after giving birth as per the Christian observance coming out of the Jewish observance. February 2nd is 40 days after Christmas.

No matter what the exact travels of the observance of the midpoint between winter and spring from Europe to the U.S., when I was out with my dog Daisy this afternoon on a walk, it looked and smelled like spring. I think we are due for a long, wonderful spring.

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About Me

I have written and published many blogs over the last 15 years on the topics of Later Born Baby Boomers, Peace & Justice Activism, Virtual Worlds, Gene Stratton-Porter, and Medical Child Abuse. I love research, information and the quest for knowledge. I'm an anthropologist by training, and a freelance content creator by vocation. I love things that make sense, could be, and might be so I enjoy good speculative fiction along the lines of Cory Doctorow and TV shows like Dr. Who and Orphan Black.